County Republican organizers have suggested a low-tech way to prevent the embarrassing vote-counting troubles the Iowa GOP caucuses experienced this year: Require three identical copies of the official precinct tally sheets.

Five other official documents that the Republican Party of Iowa requires precinct leaders to fill out on caucus night come in triplicate — with a white top sheet and pink and yellow carbon copies underneath.

But the Form E doesn’t. That’s the document that precinct leaders must use to write down vote totals for each candidate, then sign and mail to party headquarters for certification.

“Why the Form E, which is the utmost critical one, why that’s not in triplicate is beyond me,” John Rowe, the GOP chairman in Cerro Gordo County, told The Des Moines Register.

Karen Zander, the GOP chairwoman in Franklin County, said: “The Form E is just one sheet of paper. And it’s white. It’s not fluorescent pink or a bright color of any kind.”

As with all other paperwork filled out in triplicate on caucus night, one copy would stay with the county chair, one would go to the county auditor and one would go to the state party.

On caucus night, county leaders reported vote totals from all 1,774 precincts, and the numbers gave Mitt Romney an eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum.

About 2½ weeks later, when GOP officials finished adding the votes spelled out on the Form Es, they discovered typos in the vote counts from 131 precincts, and Santorum was 34 votes ahead. But ballots in eight precincts weren’t counted because volunteers in those communities failed to turn in the paperwork.

At first, GOP officials said the full actual results would never be known because the margin was so narrow and there were so many typos in other precincts’ tallies that the numbers those eight precincts reported on caucus night couldn’t be trusted.

A couple of days later, compelled by the state central committee, GOP Chairman Matt Strawn declared Santorum the official winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses.

Iowa quickly became the target of scorn for its counting debacle, and Strawn has faced pressure to step down.

As Republicans in Iowa hash out how to make the vote count more reliable, they’ve considered asking the party to pay someone $500 a month or so to oversee and coordinate each county. But the charm of the caucuses is that they are a volunteer-driven operation, said Kathy Bobst, the GOP treasurer in Franklin County.

Republicans have also talked about using voting machines, but concluded that would make Iowa’s vote dangerously close to a primary — and New Hampshire jealously guards its role in hosting the nation’s first primary.

Several Iowans said people shouldn’t overreact just because of one close vote count.

They noted that all but 0.45 percent of the precincts were included in the certification.

Don Lucas, GOP chairman in Lee County, pointed out that party leaders certified more precincts than in any other caucus in history. The closeness of the result is what’s at issue, he said, and the process would have won praise from caucus- watchers if there had been a more substantial margin of victory.

“In any system that large, there’s going to be a few mistakes with the unbelievably small margin of error we’re talking about,” he said.